McNeice Bounces Back to Make Boulder Final
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA – Great Britain’s Alannah McNeice secured a spot in teh IFSC Climbing World Championships Boulder final tonight, sharing first place in qualification with USA’s Anne Sanders with a score of 84.6 points. The result marks a strong recovery for McNeice following a near-podium finish in the Lead finals.
Both McNeice and Sanders topped three of the four boulders during the qualification round.McNeice topped boulder one, while Sanders successfully completed boulders one and two. USA’s Janja Garnbret was the only other climber to top boulder two.
The competition for remaining final spots was tight, with climbers from positions four to eight all topping the final two boulders, making attempts the deciding factor. France’s Oriane Bertone secured fourth place with 69.6 points after topping boulder four on her fourth attempt, narrowly avoiding elimination.
A surprise fifth-place finish went to USA’s Melina Costanza, who qualified with 69.5 points despite being the first climber on the wall. This is Costanza’s debut World Championships appearance, having previously competed in three IFSC Boulder Cups in 2022.
Rounding out the finalists are Ayala Kerem (69.4 points) in sixth, Jennifer Buckley (69.2 points) in seventh – securing two climbers each for the USA and Slovenia in the final – and Anna Maria Apel (68.1 points) in eighth.
“It was a lot of fun,” mcneice said after the round. “After Lead finals it was hard to get into a good mindset again because I was so close to the podium, but I was really happy with how I climbed today.” She added, “I was definitely feeling the pressure coming into this comp and was dealing with the temperature as well. It was just a mixture of bad things leading to not my highest ranking of the season, and then it was just a matter of hyping myself up for this round, which was quite hard, but I’m happy with it now.”
The women’s Boulder final will be held later tonight, where the new IFSC Boulder world champion will be crowned. Full qualification results are available at https://www.ifsc-climbing.org/events/ifsc-climbing-world-championships-seoul-2025/results/index?discipline=boulder&category=women. Updates will be posted on the IFSC website (https://www.ifsc-climbing.org/) and its social media channels: Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/sportclimbing/), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/ifsclimbing/), LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/ifsclimbing/), threads (https://www.threads.net/@ifsclimbing), TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@worldclimbing), X (https://x.com/ifsclimbing), YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@sportclimbing/), Bilibili, Douyin, Weibo, and Xiaohongshu.
